Visiting Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said Thursday that his country was keen on supporting Lebanon to confront the crisis of the Syrian refugees.  “No state has ever confronted what Lebanon is facing,” Niinisto said during a joint conference with his Lebanese counterpart at Baabda Palace.  We want to provide the biggest possible support to […]

  Police in Spain arrested a rich Lebanese man suspected of trying to buy the healthy liver of a poor immigrant to receive it as a transplant, officials said Wednesday.   They said it was the first such organ trafficking racket uncovered in Spain, which is a pioneer in advanced transplants and performs more such […]

  Lebanon has come at the bottom of a ranking of women in the lower house or single house of parliament in The Women in Politics Map 2014, launched by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and U.N. Women. The research, which was released on Tuesday, gave Lebanon a 3.1 percent of female representation, putting it 139th in the […]

  As the conflict enters its fourth year, millions of children in war-torn Syria and in refugee camps in neighboring countries are suffering from a severe lack of medical care. One in 10 children — more than 1.2 million — has fled Syria; there are over 500,000 Syrian children living as refugees in Lebanon. Since […]

  A militant group issued a rare apology Saturday for a twin suicide bombing in Beirut that killed eight people and wounded dozens, including children from a nearby orphanage. The al Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades issued the statement on militant websites apologizing for civilian deaths. It said a "technical fault" affected the second of two […]

    The privatization of public sectors would boost economic output and public access to services, Lebanese President Michel Sleiman said Saturday. “We need to think seriously about re-studying subsidies policies in addition to adopting the right privatization methods in some sectors to improve productivity and reduce the burden for citizens,” he said. This is the […]

  President Michel Suleiman thanked on Monday Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, for Doha’s role in the release in Syria of more than a dozen Greek Orthodox nuns.   A Baabda Palace statement said that during phone conversations, Suleiman also thanked the Syrian government and other parties involved in the release of the […]

Washington D.C., Mar 7, 2014 / 03:13 pm (CNA).- A Catholic bishop and a Baptist pastor urged members of the U.S. Senate to address the “dire situation” facing Christians in the Middle East, proposing a special religious freedom envoy to the region. mIncreased “religious hostilities” around the world, “but particularly in the Middle East” leads Bishop Richard E. Pates and Dr. Russell D. Moore to “believe that a Special Envoy is needed to focus on the dire situation affecting religious minorities.”

Among the minority groups, Christians are “most targeted for harassment and attacks in the largest number of countries,” the authors said in a March 4 letter to Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mike Lee of Utah. Bishop Pates, of Des Moines, Iowa, is the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, and Moore serves as the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

The religious figures encouraged Sens. Coburn and Lee to hold a vote on a senate bill to create a Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia. The senators have placed a hold on the bill, citing concerns over creating a new office when a religious freedom diplomatic position already exists that has remained vacant. The position of ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom has remained unfilled since Suzan Cook resigned from the position in Oct. 2013.

  Maaloula is a Syrian town located 50Km North of Damascus. It is situated at an altitude of more than 1500 meters and is considered the most important Christian site in Syria and one of the very few remaining villages in the world that still speak Aramaic. Maaloula is a town where the language of […]

  Qatar’s intelligence chief and a Lebanese General Security team crossed into Syria on Sunday from the Bekaa town of Arsal to receive the Maalula nuns who will be freed by their abductors, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. “Qatari intelligence chief Ghanim al-Kubaisi and a General Security delegation have crossed Arsal towards the Syrian border ahead […]